


Missing Pages

by Redpea3



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock Roulette, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-28 12:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7639813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redpea3/pseuds/Redpea3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ficlets told from John's point of view.  Some are headcanons, some projecting out into Series 4.  All written post-TAB but may reflect earlier points in the timeline.</p><p>Mostly just a place to collect my Tumblr drabbles. :-)</p><p><a href="http://redpeacoat3.tumblr.com">@redpeacoat3</a> on Tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Balance of Probability

John is used to beating the odds. Major Harrow, the attending trauma surgeon in Afghanistan, warned of permanent nerve damage, but the wound from the gunshot fully healed within weeks. Miraculously, John retained full range of motion in his shoulder, though the injury shifted into a psychosomatic limp in his opposite leg. He returned to London and endured the pain and embarrassment of every step he took during the day. He couldn’t even rest at night due to his recurring dreams of the battlefield. Every day felt like prolonging the inevitable. He wouldn’t see the new year—he knew it in the weary ache of his bones and the hazy resignation of his mind.

But he survived. His limp and his nightmares were both cured by a person of equally improbable circumstance. Had he not agreed to watch an episode of EastEnders with Harry (and eaten half a box of biscuits while there instead of drinking) he might not have taken the walk through Russell Square Gardens that afternoon. He wouldn’t have met up with Mike, and he wouldn’t have walked through the doors of the pathology lab at Bart’s and had his entire life pivot around a lithe enigma in black.

And when Sherlock died, there was something in the back of John’s mind that he couldn’t ever directly acknowledge. The tiniest belief and shred of faith glowed dim in his consciousness. It couldn’t possibly be the end; the story didn’t make sense. He wasn’t really gone. John denied the pull of fate, through nights of tears and screams and plaintive bargaining with the silence. He kept his pistol loaded but dormant in his desk drawer. He hoped, he prayed and he somehow knew that by some miracle Sherlock would come back. Once again, he survived. 

And when Sherlock returned, resurrected and larger than life, John knew that he was out of miracles. He had won his fair share of them in life, and he’d never ask for another again. Statistics tells us that independent events have no bearing on subsequent trials. You can flip 100 heads in a row, and you still have a 50/50 shot of pulling tails. However, John’s winning streak wasn’t based on unrelated happenings. He had bargained and begged, and his luck would catch up with him. It was simply a balance of probability.

So, he chose Mary. He held her in his arms at night, safe, secure and warm. The razor thin edge of possibility that perhaps his love for Sherlock was reciprocated was not a risk he could take. His nightmares returned, his leg hurt, his shoulder ached.

And again, Sherlock lay on a gurney, moments away from death. So John, angry and bitter and broken, begged and pleaded for just one more, one final miracle, damn any other streak or future moment of luck in his life.

And when Sherlock survived, the safety, security and warmth of Mary was gone. 

So John knew he no longer could play the game the same way anymore. There was no balance of good and evil, nothing he could control without knowing all of the possible events. He chose Sherlock, but he needed to save his child.

He pretended, so used to denying his feelings, he played one final game, one final ruse to guide Mary through the pregnancy and see his child to safety.

And in the end, the balance of probability played its final card. In a place he couldn’t acknowledge directly, in the corner of his consciousness he always knew it. She was forty, they used protection, and Major Harrow had told him of his questionable fertility without documenting it in his file. The baby was born, the sweet baby was ill, and he was unable to help. They tested his blood, the very marrow of his bones, and he was incompatible. As incompatible as a stranger, which it turned out, was all that he was. 

Weary and worn, he returned to Baker street, and sat in his chair in the rays of afternoon light from the window opposite. Sherlock’s shadow swayed on the floor as he stood in the window frame, playing his violin with eyes on the street below. Plaintive notes of an adagio melody vibrated through the strings, through his body, to John’s bare feet on the floor.

And that’s when John knew. Not in a corner of thought, not a dim possibility, but a blazing brightness that rang with the truth of a feeling unspoken, improbable, but the only thing that remained after years of loss and heartache and pain.

John stood and Sherlock turned. Their eyes met, and they both knew.

In this universe, in this timeline, the cards were dealt and they could play. The game was not over, it would continue and pivot from this moment as the rules had changed. The game wasn’t over, but together, somehow they had already beaten the odds.


	2. The Unspoken Promise

The room looked too cheerful to be real. John sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair alongside Sherlock and watched the even rise and fall of his breaths as he slept. The heart monitor on the other side of the bed blipped rhythmically, and even though John knew how to deactivate the sound, he didn’t want to. Even when his eyes were shut, even in a long sleep-deprived blink, he wanted the reminder that Sherlock was there, breathing, and his heart pumped with life.

Sherlock was back in hospital, for two weeks now, after his ill-advised expose at Leinster Gardens. He exposed the truth about Mary, but had to cover it with a bigger lie to keep everyone around him safe. John knew that, he wasn’t an idiot, but it still hurt. Since then, he had barely left Sherlock’s side. He needed the time to just watch, to breathe, to allow himself to consciously know the truth that every cell of his body recognized from the moment that they met.

He loved this man, he’d always loved him, and he would do anything to protect him.

Sherlock’s eyes opened and his gaze drifted to John. John stood and went to his side, brushing a curl off his forehead with steady fingers. They looked at each other in silence.

_Soon, Sherlock, heal and let me take care of you. Let me take care of this._

Now wasn’t the moment for declarations of love, for eloping, for a happy ending—but the time was coming soon. He just had to be patient, as there was still a fight ahead. Still a war to win. Secrets that needed to be kept and lies that needed to be told. John knew could do it, as painful as it may be. He’d been dissembling his whole life, what’s a few more months?

He smiled at Sherlock, a small grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth with hope. Sherlock smirked and looked away.

_It will be worth it, love. It will be so worth it._


	3. The Monkey's Paw

John rested his bare hands on the cool metal, looking over the calm ocean from the balcony three stories above the sand.  The sun had already set, but the clear sky was still illuminated by indirect rays of light.  He watched as two children frolicked on the shore in matching white sundresses, their parents a few meters behind, hands clasped and swinging in the space between.

Little girls, he thought, were so much sweeter than rambunctious, running, cursing little boys.  Always getting into trouble, always in danger.  Phone calls from school, scraped knees and broken radii.  Black eyes. Bloody noses.  Picked liquor cabinet locks and swiped cigarettes.

John smiled to himself and offered a little prayer to the heavens. 

_Please let it be a baby girl._

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned away from the sea.  Mary stood behind him, her head cocked and wearing a sideways smile on her sunburnt face.

“We missed the sunset,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

John grunted and looked down at her feet.  She wiggled her toes and the sparkles in the silver polish caught the lamplight from the hotel room.  It was getting too dark for natural light.

“I guess we were too busy doing more interesting things,” he said, glancing back up to her eyes, but she was now coolly staring at the shore.  Mary blinked and flicked her gaze to John.  She smirked.

“Come back to bed.”

John ran a hand through her curly hair and down her bare arm before dropping it to his side.  His fingers twitched.

“In a moment, love.”

Mary stepped up to John, pressing the fronts of their bodies together.  The silk of her nightgown felt cool against his bare chest, and he shuddered as the metal from the railing pushed against his back.  She quirked an eyebrow.

“Don’t keep me waiting too long.”  
“I won’t,” John said, to her retreating figure.  He sighed and turned back toward the ocean, the sky shades of vibrant, icy blue and pale green against the deep, inky black of the distant sea. He felt a shift in his core, from possibility and hope to something lost.  Something shameful.

_Stop. Stop thinking about it. You have what you need, though it may not be exactly what you want._

He’d seen those cool shades of blue and green before.  Many times, in fact, but never so aching and wistful as he had seen immediately after the moment of revelation at his wedding.  A fallen face, truth finally seeping through the carefully crafted façade of indifference.  He did a double take, not believing at first, but the gaze had held firm until it fell from his eyes, to his lips, to the waxed parquet floor.  He remembered clearing his throat as his head spun, grabbing Mary’s hand and saying some nonsense over her shoulder while blinded by the flashing lights and swirls of dancing fabric behind her. 

John had read Sherlock’s blog post in the early morning from bed where he lay, naked, next to his sleeping new wife.  His pregnant wife.  It felt like his heart was torn in half, how unfair and ironic it was to finally see the great heart behind the incredible brain once he had pledged his love to another.  Somehow, after all the fights and chases, falls and cases, John was the one to finally break Sherlock Holmes.  He looked to the sky and swallowed thickly. 

_I have what I need, and I never thought I would be so lucky.  Let him be happy too.  Please._

The moonlight on the dunes cast long shadows from the scrub bushes, prickly columns of grey that shot like slung arrows on the wet sand.  John smiled at the feeling of the squishing sand between his toes, recalling the rented cottages of his childhood holidays.  Fleeting moments of happiness, far from his parents’ dank row house of peeling paint and rusted fences.  He wondered if he would only experience happiness separated from reality.  Hot bleakness in the surreal solitude of an Afghan desert.  Dreary tunnels below the streets of London, where bare bulbs overhead illuminated pale, sharp cheekbones wet with sweat and rain.

He thought of his parents, remembering their straining efforts to hold together a marriage doomed only to bear fruit when everything was perfect.  John had grown, endured so much loss and pain, and he knew that Mary was the solid rock that would hold him down to earth when all he wanted to do was run.  Every nerve and tendon in his body ached with it, the call for danger that had been a part of his world ever since he was a hyperactive boy, a reckless teen, an angry adult.  If only he could dissolve that pit in his belly, the thought and memory that what he had with Sherlock was just as true as anything he now had with Mary.  A family.  A home.  Peace in the insanity of good, wild, real life.

One more prayer, one more wish, one more sign.  You get three wishes, John remembered, three wishes were granted when you grasped the monkey’s paw.

_Please God, give me a sign.  Show me that I’ve made the right choice._

He turned back to the bedroom and felt a twinge in his chest just below his heart.  He brought his fingertips to the crevice where his abdominal muscles met, brushing against a mosquito bite just off the midline, to the right.

It bled red where his nail scratched the skin.


	4. The Blonde Mirage

The little girl was adorable. Her platinum curls bobbed at shoulder length, framing her round face.  Her blue eyes and long eyelashes made her look like a doll, as did her chubby, bright red, tear stained cheeks.  A pink leash hung from her clutched hands. 

John stood in the doorway looking at her, his mouth gaping and left hand twitching.  He wondered where the hell her parents were, as she seemed too young to be wandering off knocking on strangers’ doors on her own.

“He’s gone!  Are you John Watson?  Is Sherlock here?  Can you help me?”

John furrowed his brow, surprised by her American accent.  How did she know who he was and where they were?  He and Sherlock had rented a cottage in Cornwall to recuperate from a devastating few months, and only Mycroft knew where they had gone.  Mycroft and this little American girl, apparently.

She looked so much like Harry as a child that it made John’s head spin.  A little like Harry, a little like Mary, a little like the daughter that he’d never have.

John shook his head.  “Where are your parents?”

“Back at our house.  They saw you both at the grocery store and told me that Sherlock Holmes was here!  Then they went to take a nap and our dog ran away and he needs us and I can’t find him anywhere!”  
The girl began to cry and John anxiously looked up and down the street.  He thought of inviting her in for tea to comfort her, but realized that might seem a bit not good.  He held out a finger. 

“Wait here a moment.  I’ll be right back.”

He skipped back into the sitting room where Sherlock lay, reclined, on the sofa.

“Sherlock, there’s a child at the door.”

Sherlock looked at him and raised his eyebrows.  His curls lay matted against his forehead and he still looked wan from his illness, though he was far better than he had been last week.

“What does she want?”

“How do you know it’s a girl?”

Sherlock just glared at him.  “You wouldn’t look so affected if it were a boy.”

John sighed.  “Yes, it’s a girl.  Lost pet.”

Sherlock sat up.  “Lost what?”

“A dog.”

“I’ll be there in a moment, wait with her outside.”

And with that, he disappeared up the stairs to the bedroom, presumably to change out of his pyjamas.  John smiled to himself and went back to find the child.  An easy case like this would be good for Sherlock, and he looked forward to getting out of the cottage before settling in for the night.  He grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen before going to meet the girl.  When he opened the door; however, she was gone.

John walked out to the street and looked up and down for the child.  No luck.  He bit his lip, wondering what to do next.  He didn’t even know her name.  Sherlock walked up behind him, wearing slacks and a white dress shirt, improperly buttoned.  It gaped open low on his chest.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” John said, directing his gaze at the exposed skin on Sherlock’s belly.  If he just shifted a bit, it would be visible.  The silvery-pale bullet hole, fully healed but forever there as a reminder of John’s ignorance.  He couldn’t see it, though, and Sherlock’s fingers dropped to his front, quickly fixing the button.

John looked up and met Sherlock’s gaze.  His brow was furrowed.

“I know where she went.  Follow me John.”

John followed, obviously.  He’d follow Sherlock anywhere.

They jogged past a bank of row houses on the narrow street, spiraling toward the shore.  When they stepped onto the boardwalk bordering the beach, John looked out toward the sand and laughed.  The little girl was sitting cross-legged on the ground with a beautiful black puppy in her lap.  She looked up and grinned at John.

“Never mind!”

John looked back at Sherlock, who was observing the girl with a detached tilt to his head.

“Good, that’s…good,” Sherlock said.

John nodded, deciding, and stooped to untie his shoes.  After a moment, Sherlock knelt and did the same.  John peeled off his socks and stuck them in his loafers, placing them under a bench.  Sherlock looked at the expensive oxfords in his hands for a beat before putting them on the concrete next to John’s.

“Someone will nick those.”

Sherlock shrugged.  “They’re just shoes.”

They stepped over to the little girl and knelt to scratch the puppy on the head.

“Sheep dog?” John asked, and Sherlock scoffed.

“Schipperkes.  It means ‘ _Little Captain_.’ You should know all about that, John.”

John swatted at Sherlock’s arm and they laughed as the puppy barked at the commotion.  The girl clipped the leash to the dog’s collar. 

“Can we walk you back?” John asked

“No, I know where to go.  We’re just in that green house over there,” she said, pointing at a large cottage with frontage on the beach.  _Rich Americans_.

“It’s perfectly safe out here.  She’ll be fine,” Sherlock said.

John nodded and waved at the girl as she walked away with her dog.  For good measure, he watched until she disappeared behind the dune.  He sighed and stepped toward the shore.

The sun was setting, and they were alone.

Sherlock approached and stood close.  He ran a hand through his hair, still breathing heavily from the run down to the beach.  It would take a while for his lung capacity to get back to its usual robustness.  John felt a pang of guilt over letting him run like that, but he was just so happy to see him energized and excited about something.

John watched as Sherlock swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his long, pale neck.  Sweat dripped from his brow, down his face, and John ached.

He thought of the wall between them, invisible but strong.  Boundaries set long ago by both of them to keep each other safe.

_He’s not my date._

_Alone protects me._

_Why would he care?  We’ll still do stuff._

_Grit on the lens.  Fly in the ointment._

_Don’t know how those rumors got started._

John closed his eyes and saw Mary’s curls in his mind’s eye.  He watched as they fused with the little girl.

A child, young and free, running around Sherlock in delight while he watched.  Sherlock kept his eyes on the girl, following her movements as he spun.  He always acted like he was fond of Mary, before, but it couldn’t have been true.  John saw the looks, fleeting but strong, visions of loss and defeat.  While watching the little girl dance, the look on his face was far from joy.  He wasn’t a proud uncle or a doting father.  No, he was frightened.  Dazed.  Lost.

Now that it was all over, the façade cracked and crumbled, Mary couldn’t confuse them anymore.  It was up to John to lead.

He pushed through the wall and grasped Sherlock’s hand.

The sun dipped into the horizon, just a sliver now, its orange rays shooting against the sea.

Sherlock was looking at John, he could tell from the periphery, but John just stared out at the sunset and smiled.  When Sherlock squeezed his hand, John turned to look in his eyes.  He could see the sun.

“John…”

He didn’t want to let Sherlock’s hand go.  He turned to face him, bringing his other hand up to Sherlock’s face.  He cupped his chin and looked him in the eyes.  Sherlock’s expression quickly changed from confusion to relief.  Swiftly, he bent and pressed his lips to John’s.  John sighed into the kiss and finally released Sherlock’s hand from his grip.  John gently brought his hand up his arm, then rested it upon Sherlock’s other cheek.  He cradled his face as they kissed, and Sherlock held John close, his long fingers curved around John’s waist.

The ground compacted under their bare feet, the earth shifting and settling as they swayed in the sand.  A wave crashed on their ankles and John smiled into Sherlock’s mouth.  Sherlock brought his head back to look in John’s eyes, and a tear fell down his cheek.  John brushed at it with his hand and pulled Sherlock close, nuzzling under his chin as he wrapped his arms around his slender, shaking frame.

“John…”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“I love you.”

The sun finally set into the sea.


End file.
